Nighthawk Blues

by Peter Guralnick

  “Can’t. Can’t kill me,” said the old bald-headed man, sweeping off his cap as he slithered past, nodding deferentially to Jerry. “How you being, anyhow? I heared Doc Bontemps, Will LeBow’s boy, was out to see you this afternoon.”

  “Just getting old, is all. His daddy be proud of him now. All that nigger want is for his boy to get educated, but for hisself he ain’t learned a damned thing.”

  The two old men cackled. “I hear you lost Lottie.” Cap nodded. “Still living back out in the woods in that old cabin all by yourself?”

  “Me and Blue. Blue getting old, too. Can’t see good no more. You remember when Blue could outrun any hound in the county, man he used to lead the rabbit he just so joyous to get out, run circles around them little bunnies like he was just frolicking. Now he just like the rest of us, don’t see nothing, don’t hear nothing, and he smell bad most all the time.”

  “He miss Lottie.”

  “Yeah, he miss Lottie. I declare that’s a fact. Sometimes I think he miss her more than I do, get to sniffing around wondering when she gonna come back, and I tell him, Too bad, old fellow, ain’t never gonna happen in this world. She was a good old girl. Got carried off by the lard. Doctor told her she eat too much of the fatty stuff, gonna choke off her blood supply, and that’s what it did. One night she wake in the early-morning hours, she didn’t hardly make a sound, just put her hand to her throat like as if she was choking. Couldn’t say nothing.” He shook his head. “Heart stopped.”

  “You still moonshining?”

  “Doing better than ever,” Cap said proudly. “Some fool done complained to the county, sheriff come up and he bust up my old still. I give him a few bottles, and he don’t say nothing, just take a ax to that old broken-down thing we give up on fifteen years ago, said, There, I guess we got ’em, don’t we, Cap? I say, Yas-suh, captain, you sho did, you jes’ put ol’ Cap right out of business. He always treated me fair, that boy. Some folks say they don’t like him, but I say you always know where you stand with him.”

  “That’s right. Not like some of these young fellers. Ain’t nothing worse than a jealous nigger, I don’t care what you say. I’d rather have a white man’s prejudice any day of the week.”

  “Young nig-groes always fixing to stir up trouble. Now they want to bus the kids to school, take ’em across the highway, plunk ’em in with all these damned peckerwoods, stir up I don’t know what all kind of mess—”

  “Surely they’re not just trying to stir up trouble,” said Jerry, sorry he had said anything almost before the words were out of his mouth.

  Cap’s eyes flashed on him. “Ain’t nothing else but trouble,” he said. “White folks against niggers. Niggers against niggers,” he muttered mysteriously.

  “That’s right,” said Hawk.

  “But in the end it’ll be better, won’t it?” said Lori.

  “Ain’t none of us gonna be around for the end. Less’n they hurry it.”

  “But your children—”

  “My children be better off if they just leave us damn well alone.”

  Lori didn’t say anything more, and Jerry kept his mouth shut.

  “You hear who’s come back homer1” the old man said to Hawk.

  “Who?”

  “Little Mose.”

  “Little Mose!” Hawk rumbled. “He dead.”

  “Naw, not him. His boy, that didn’t never know his daddy. He getting along about thirty-two, thirty now. His mama took him up to Chicago when he was just a kid, said when he come back he gonna be big-time. He go by the name of Edwards, he taken his mother’s name.” Hawk nodded. “You know, they say sometimes it skips. His daddy was a worthless fool, couldn’t play for nothing neither, about the only way he put peoples in mind of 01’ Man Mose was the way he drunk himself to death, just like his daddy, only quicker. But they say this boy got records out, he come back in a brand-new 88, with a long coat, fox-fur collar, and his hair all nappy like he was some kind of overgrown pickaninny. He playing down at the Sunset tonight, at least that’s what they say.”

  “Hunh,” said Hawk indifferently.

  “You been down there yet? Cats been asking about you. Wondering when you coming back from Europe or California or wherever you all been.”

  “Ain’t been nowhere, ain’t gonna play no more of these gigs that don’t pay no money, ain’t that right? That boy there gonna see to that.”

  Cap looked at Jerry suspiciously. Jerry inwardly shrugged; it was just one more thinly veiled insult to ignore. “Well, I better be going now,” said the old man apologetically. “I just stop by to say hello.”

  “Hunh,” said Hawk again. “Just don’t you never say goodbye.”

  They tried to stop him when he said he was going down to the cafe, just to look around. “Look, why don’t you just wait a few days?” Jerry said, thinking of his grandfather, who had died in a snowstorm when no one had been able to talk him out of leaving the house for Symphony.

  “It’s late,” said Lori. “Let me go down to the cafe and talk to Little Mose, see if he’ll be around for a few days, he’ll probably want to come back here and see you—”

  “Aww, Hawk,” remonstrated Mattie. “You heard what that doctor boy said. Don’t you think he know what he talking about? He say you should be in bed. It ain’t right, Roosevelt,” she said, putting a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  He sat there staring straight ahead, seemingly too weak to shake her off. At last she took her hand from him with a helpless shrug, and Hawk struggled to his feet. “Don’t you think I know nothing?” he rumbled.

  Mattie was practically in tears.

  “Why not wait a few days?” Lori said. “Take it easy, rest up, get your strength back?”

  But Hawk shook his head and reached for his big broad-brimmed hat. “Ain’t nobody going with me?” he said.

  Down at the Sunset the evening was already well under way. The dancers were energetically working out, while the band (guitar, bass, drums, sax, and keyboards, with another guitar propped up on the crowded stand) was playing something that sounded like “Cool Jerk.” The Sunset had prospered since Jerry first came to Yola. It had added on a whole new wing in imitation knotty pine for entertainment, the parking lot (which had scarcely existed ten years ago) was paved and boasted a wooden sign announcing “Entertainment Tonite” with “Moses Edward” scrawled out on a piece of cardboard tacked up underneath. The Budweiser clock on the wall now illuminated a small stage and dance floor with a younger, better-dressed class of clientele. Even the old wing with jukebox, bar, and potbellied stove seemed somehow transformed by the tinsel decorations left over from someone’s birthday celebration perhaps, and Jerry was not sure he recognized anyone from the days when he thought Hawk had a proprietary interest in the place.

  Hawk nodded to one or two older couples, Cap came over to their table to say that he was just leaving, Mattie and Lori excused themselves, and Jerry struggled to get his bearings. On stage the band ran through an assortment of ten-year-old soul instrumentals (“Soul Serenade,” “Soul Twist,” “Green Onions,” “The Stumble”) and up-to-the-minute funk. They were dressed in matching outfits with short jackets of sequined blue and occasionally glanced at the scuffed music stands monogrammed SB but more often scanned the crowd for diversions. A waitress came over for their order, and Jerry paid for it, getting a Coke for Scooter, while Hawk was still fumbling in his pocket.

  “Which one of them’s Little Mose?” said Hawk angrily in a voice that cut through all the noise and clatter.

  “I don’t think he’s on yet,” said Jerry at precisely the moment that the bass player took the mike, while the band vamped in the background, and announced:

  “And now, direct from Chicago, the man you’ve all been waiting to hear, he’ll Cry a Tear For You, Won’t Let Go Till It’s Gone, he’ll Love You Hard and still leave you Screaming for More. The man who don’t want no Spiders in His Stew, you don’t look out he’ll Follow You to the Ends of Time, he’s an Easy Lover, don�
��t never Leave No Trace. So let’s put your hands together, ladies and gentlemen, and give a nice home-town welcome to the Master of the Stratocaster, the Crown Prince of Gen-u-ine Funk, the Senor from South America—what’s that? Oh, you’ll have to excuse me, I thought Mississippi was South America. Let’s have a warm welcome for one of the few good things that come out of Yola, Mississippi—and he come a long way, baby, Moses Edwards, Little Mose and the Bros.”

  The crowd laughed and applauded good-naturedly as a small dapper man with a close-cropped Afro and tight-fitting blue jumpsuit bounded up to the stage and without so much as a moment’s pause stamped his feet, let out a little scream, and launched into a fast-paced, no-holds-barred version of “Try a Little Tenderness.” By the middle of the song Little Mose’s face was bathed in sweat, he loosened one button, then another of his snug suit until his chest was bare and glistening, then he unscrewed the mike from its stand, tiptoeing forward in little steps to the edge of the stage, striding back and forth like a proud bantam.

  It was all pretty standard, Jerry thought, as Little Mose segued into “In the Midnight Hour”—the band, the showmanship, the entertainer’s calculation—but he had the crowd in the palm of his hand, as they answered his “Good Gods!” and “Tell the truths” with their own “That’s right,” “I hear you,” and “Tell me about it.” “Have mercies” with their own deep-throated murmurs of assent.

  He supposed the singer must be in his mid-thirties, though it was hard to tell from the smooth-skinned, light-brown face, the squint of his close-set eyes, and the sardonic, slightly amused cast to the features, which effectively distanced performer from performance, making it impossible to gauge just what were the singer’s own emotions. The next song evidently was one of his own, to which he applied the full treatment, falling to his knees, grasping at the hand of a lady in the front row, milking his audience for everything it was worth.

  “He’s not bad, is he?” said Lori. “You ever hear of him before?”

  Jerry shook his head and signaled to the waitress for more drinks. His face was bathed in perspiration, as if he were the one who was getting the workout.

  “I guess he must be on some little Chicago label?” said Lori. “You think Hawk knew about him?”

  Jerry shook his head again. He was watching Hawk, who was staring intently at the stage, never taking his eyes off the singer—what was he seeing? Jerry wondered. Was it Ol’ Man Mose he saw, reliving memory, or did he see something altogether different through artist’s eyes?

  Hawk caught him looking. “What you think of all this foolishness?” that big voice boomed out. “All this jumping around and carrying on and all that shit. Seem like just a lot of jive to me. Course I don’t know.”

  “Kind of loud,” said Lori, shouting into Hawk’s ear.

  Hawk grunted, as Little Mose screamed and launched into an impassioned version of “I Feel Good.” “Too much noise,” Hawk pronounced. “Course I don’t mind, but that’s where he making his mistake.” He poked Scooter in the ribs. “See, out in the country we used to listen to the crickets, think they was making some kind of song. Once you get used to this kind of racket, you ain’t never gonna hear them crickets no more.”

  Scooter nodded, and Jerry gulped down his drink. He supposed maybe it was true. Hawk wasn’t talking about hearing loss, he was talking about something else. And yet he had himself amplified his guitar so he could be heard above the din in the joints where he played. Lori touched his elbow, as if to say go easy, but tonight he really didn’t care, he didn’t give a shit if he got drunk or not. He signaled for more.

  “Hey look,” he heard Hawk’s voice boom out, “that gal ain’t wearing no underdrawers.” Jerry looked disbelievingly in the direction that Hawk was pointing, and sure enough there was a young girl in a saffron-colored dress scrunched down on the floor and wearing no underpants at all.

  He looked away embarrassed and caught Lori looking at him and reddened. “I’m not wearing any underdrawers either,” he thought she whispered in his ear, but it was hard to hear and besides she was wearing jeans.

  An old man with spiky white hair came over and asked Mat-tie to dance. She smiled and got up, placing her hand decorously on his shoulder, but by the time she got out on the floor she was shaking her ass in his face and doing the bump just like anyone else. Jerry had scarcely had time to adjust to that when a mountainous woman with a black Medusa wig piled high on top of her head came over and asked if he would like to dance.

  “Oh, no, really,” he said demurely, thinking if she ever sat on him he would be crushed.

  “Oh, come on,” said Lori.

  “Sure. Come on, sugar,” said the woman in a small, sweet voice. “You know, you only live once!”

  Jerry was still shaking his head as Lori pushed him up from the table, and before he knew it he was out on the dance floor himself, carrying himself stiffly in response to the fat woman’s graceful swoops and dips. “My name’s Claudia,” said his partner.

  “Jerry,” he said, intoxicated with her graceful movements, the smell of the dance floor, and the blue haze of cigarette smoke.

  “Well, gotta get back to work, Jerry,” she said at the end of the number, jingling the waitress’ change apron that he had failed to notice earlier.

  “You want to dance?” he said to Lori.

  Little Mose was singing “Here I Am (Come and Take Me),” and Lori folded herself into his arms. He sniffed her hair —he could have gulped her down. “You know, I forget sometimes—” he started to say.

  “You forget a lot. You know, you’re drunk.”

  “No, I mean, I forget how much fun—”

  “You think Hawk’s gonna be all right?”

  “Hawk? No, I mean you and me—”

  “You think he’s going to be all right?”

  When they got back to the table, Hawk was remonstrating with Mattie about something. “Now the boy don’t have to go home. His sister can take care of the baby.” Mattie started to get up from her seat, and Hawk put his hand on her shoulder.

  “I don’t want to hear no more of that,” he said angrily.

  Scooter asked if he could have another Coke, and Jerry gulped down his own drink, so he could join him.

  “I never knowed that boy to be such a serious drinker,” said Hawk to Lori, eyeing Jerry with surprise.

  The singer was doing another one of his originals, a kind of disco ballad with a long spoken rap that concluded, “Be true to your dream, or your dream won’t be true to you.” Jerry snorted. He had never heard such shit before in his life. How was your dream going to betray you? Be true to your dream, and your dream will be true to you? He laughed out loud and turned to Hawk, but Hawk was preoccupied with a bunch of people who had come over to say hello. He turned to Lori to see if she might like to dance again, but she was dancing with the same woolly-headed old man who had been dancing with Mattie before. Like himself, Jerry noticed with some triumph, she was tight and constricted in her movements, for all her apparent spontaneity she seemed stiff and self-conscious in her response to the old man’s lithe and courtly steps. They said you could tell a lot about a girl from the way she danced. They said you could tell how a girl fucked from the way she danced.

  “What do you think?” he said to Little Bo.

  “It’s kind of old-fashioned,” said Scooter shortly.

  “Hunh!” laughed Hawk.

  The rising level of conversation, the clink of glasses and bustling clatter of tables being cleared, pretty girls lifting up their arms in celebration of—nothing—

  Jerry wanted to ask Hawk if this was the way it was in the old days, if this was the way it had been. Did everybody fall into bed at the end of the night, did everybody fuck in the end? He thought some sociologist should take a poll. A poll with your pole.

  “You like to dance?” said a voice close by. Looking up, he saw that it was the heavy-set waitress, Claudia, again.

  “You think you can get me a drink when we’re done?”<
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  “You don’t need no more to drink, sugar,” she said shyly.

  “Goddammit,” Jerry exploded. “Everybody’s telling me what I need, and what I don’t need. Why doesn’t everybody just leave me alone?” It seemed as if for a moment the music stopped and every eye in the hot, crowded room was on him. He thought he heard murmurs of disapproval—but, of course, that was ridiculous. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know, I don’t know why I—”

  Claudia’s feet moved with a delicacy and swiftness surprising in so large a woman, as she executed intricate little steps that made Jerry feel as if he were fat and clumsy. “Don’t worry about it, sugar,” she said kindly and put her hand on his shoulder as a slow number started up and gathered him in to her. He felt crushed against her bosom, wishing he could lose himself in the generous folds of flesh. Looking over, he saw Lori dancing with Scooter and Mattie sipping decorously on her drink. His head was buzzing, the music filled his brain, driving out any stray thoughts he might have had, he clung to Claudia for dear life. He was drunk. She patted his back understandingly. “Thanks, sugar. Gotta get back to work.”

  Just then the band went into its riff, the bass player grabbed the mike and declared, “Now let’s hear it. Let’s hear it for Moses Edward, Little Mose and the Bros. Put your hands together, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to let the man hear it. Well, right now, ladies and gents, we gonna take five to stay alive, we might take ten, my friend, but we’ll be back again. Any re-questses, you just let us know and we do our best to satisfy you. We always do our best, and we always satisfy—you know we do, sugar, that’s right. So y’all be sure and stick around, don’t be a clown and put us down or be a square and walk out and go somewhere. There’s plenty more where this come from, y’hear?” Looking bored, the band finished out their number and put their instruments down. The horn player and keyboard man lit up cigarettes. Jerry stood out on the dance floor until it was practically deserted and only then stumbled back to the table.